Cross Platform Guide

[Home] - also see: [Code_Style_Conventions] - hosted at openANTz.com

also see [Code_Style_Conventions]

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Platforms:

• MSW - Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 and Server
• OSX - 10.8.5 or newer
• Linux - CentOS, Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, Debian
• *Android and iOS are planned, WebGL under consideration

ANTz is a cross-platform application written in C99 with support for 3rd party addons using C++, Python and JAVA.

Coders are encouraged to generate code that is easy to port to other platforms and be integrated as an API library.

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Conventions:

• Isolate OS specific code. All platform specific code and libraries are isolated in the 'sdk/src/os/' folder. The file '.../os/npos.h' serve as a re-direct for all OS specific methods. The actual OS specific code resides in a sub-folder for that OS, such as 'sdk/os/msw/npos.c' which where OS specific libraries are included, ie: 'windows.h'.

• Create plugin(s) for platform specific functionality, such as a .dll (MSW), .dylib (OSX) and/or .so (Linux). Ideally, everything would be cross-platform, but all to often hardware or certain libraries are OS specific.

Issues:

Line Endings - CRLF(MSW), CR(OSX), LF(Linux)

• CSV files need to be tolerant to all of the above.
• Code files (.c and .h etc...) need an extra blank line return at end of file.

File Path - ''(MSW) vs '/'(OSX, Linux)

• file path routines need to be OS aware and use appropriate slashes.
• header include statements should always use a forward slash ("../io/npgl.h") as this works under all OS compilers (MSW, OSX, Linux.)

Visual Studio - is far too tolerant of bad code...

• watch out for 'warning' followed by 'assuming' resulting from missing function declarations usually a headers issue.

Xcode - also too tolerant of non-C code...

• allows C++ behavior in C files... avoid this.
• declare all variables at the top of the function before any logic statements.

BIG ENDIAN vs little endian

• watch out when doing any bitwise or bytewise operations.
• be-aware of byte orders in communicating with other machines.

Global Variables

• rather then use globals, it is preferred to store global-like variables in the main data structure, (data->...myVariable).
• however, temporary use of globals to aid short-term development is okay, just do not initialize them when declared, as this has caused problems. Instead use one of the startup Init...() functions to initialize global variables.